David Drew

The History of Mahagonny On January 9 in trntrord , and on Januar) 16 In London, Sadkr' \\'ells stage the first Brit! b perfomlance of Kurt Weill's 'The Rhe 11J1d Fall or the C if) or Mahagonn) '. The :wailable information about this ~ork, and indeed about its composer. is so limited lhnt ~e ba' e asked Oa,id Ore~ (\\bose book on Weill is doe to appt{lr

in 1964) to relate trus ' Histof)' of :\taba~tonny·.

The Rise tmd Fall of lite City of MultugQIIIIJJ. is the fifth opera v. hieh Weill is known to have completed. The series begins with Du Prorago11i.fl, composed in 1924 when Weill w;c, :!4. • The performance of Der Protof!onisr t'>•·o )cars later at Dresden under Fritz Busch mad~! Wcnrs reputation. Th~: ne~t stage­work was a ballet-opera, Royal Palace, composed 1925-6, and performed WithOUt SUCCCS'I the fOUO\\· in& year in Dcrlin under Kleiber. Both Der Profaf!onist and Royal Palaei' are one-act works. but in 1926-7 Weill wrote a full-length opera whose libreuo, he fondly hoped, would be in the 1-Jof­mannsthal tradition. Hb publishers thought other­wise (the librettist v.a.s a young music critic) and refused to handle iL Tragically- for "hntc,er its defects, the \\ork marked an important t.:p forward for WeiU-aLI the material has been lost exe~:pt for an incomplete foiJer or ~ketches, which show among other things that scvcr.J.I of the musical ideas were later to find their way imo Mahagomll'.

After this set-back, Weill wrote a companion piece for Der ProtQJ!OniJt. entitled Der Zar /iiw sich phorographieren. lie did not \\ish Der Zar to be perfonn.:d on its 0\\n. as it is to some cll:tent dramatically dependent on its predocessor; but the work. proved so popular after a few necessary cuts had been mad~:-it \\as first performed at Leipzig m 1928 under Gustav 'Brcchcr- thut it was soon detached from its uncomfortable companion. and performed throughout Germany. Der Zar was Weill's first su~ \\ith the general public. and the onl) one to be untouched by controvcrs).'

Shortly be£ore the completion of Dtt Zar, Weill v.as asked by the committee of the 1927 Baden­Baden music fesuval to write a short one-act chamber oper:1 for th.: 1927 festival. lie decided against yet another return to the one-act form. and for a time considered writing a scena based on a seen~: from Killl! Lear. In the end he ~euled for a short scenic canwta l!l>ing for text the fivo.: ballads

'Ptoooun<:l'd 'Mab"·Jonnt'. all short '·owcl._ The "'or<l bas" purd> phoncuc )tgruhCJ&n<e. and is not 10 be .:.ooru,.,_d "itb mabopny' • AI 'otnous limos "clll hrm>cM ~I'Ok" of thr<e o:.trlo~r 'ol"'fU". v.ichou• ghin11 an) in.toauon or wbeth<:r tl1~~ ,..,~ compl~ted The first b<:hlR8C<I 10 hO> ju•cnllia, for it"'"" wriu~n ~•ounll ltis 1\\.eiOh ycar- lhc ,ul>)<~t bern~; taken from a pia) by Karl l"bcodor Korner Two olhcl')., adnpted I rom tlcun11nn Suder­munn and Ernst "''"' r••~>«lhefy must be rtueell .ome-.here bcl\\ecn 1911 ond 19.11. An uni•tenunabl.,sl:.,c.:h ol'an cn\Cmblo rrom one of the"" '"""" In a bighl> ~hrotThlhc slylc-bas .111'\"l\"Cd

• Da ZDr ""' h>en tc:\ "·c<l )0:\ctal 1111\c$ WIC.: I be ,..,, but only on"e wuh ~n} nulat>lc 'll<tt'~} 1><."'-'"-"' tbe other pro­duclio~ wd no1 uoubk "'•lb the ew._ and pull) txc.o.,..., '"" ,.0 rlc. reqwr.,. tbe mMI >klllal rroduciJQn and'" lilfl.

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entitled ' Mahagonnygesiinge' which Brecht had just published in his poetry collection Hau.spollille.• l n discus)1ons with Brecht and Caspar eher a very simple scenario was evolved without characters or plot. and to round it off Brecht added a shon finale beginning with the "ordl. 'Aber dieses ganz.e Mahagonny·.

fhe J'OCffiS contained no ~uucstion of dramatic interplay, but for the purposes of composition thc}' were divided between six solo \Oioes (probably the number Sttpulated by the Baden-Baden committee) Each or the singers was given an English name: Jessie, Bess1e. Charlie. Jlilly, Bobby, and Jimmy. The orchestra consists of 2 violins, 2 clarinets, 2 trumpets, saxophone, trombone. percusston and piano, and the work was gi~en the title of Maha­gonny, with the subtitle Songspiel (a play on the word Singspicl, implying th..: use of that fom1 for which Brecht and others used the English word 'Song'). T he score was begun and completed in May 1927 and was first pcrfom1cd at Baden-Baden two months later, on "hich occasion it caused a great stir.

The structure of the score was .IS follows (oumerab mdicating vocal numbers, and letters the orchestral intcrlud~):

I. Auf nach Mahagonny. A. Kleiner Marsch. 2. Alabama-Song 13. Vivac:.e. J. Wer in Mahagonny blieb. C. ivaee assai. 4. llenares-Song. D. S().)tcnuto {Choral) 5. Gott in Mahagonny. E. Vi-.-ae~: assai. 6. f inale. 'Aber die~ game Mahagonny·.

For reasons which will now be C).plained, this Songspicl score was temporarily wcthdrawn after the lladen-Badcn Festival-temporarily in intention. at le<:1~1. for in fact it \\aS not performed again for O\cr thtrt} years.

At the bcginrung of May 1927 Weill announced to hiS pubh~hers that 'a subject for a large-scale tr.1gic opera is already worked out'. This must have lx'Cn the beginnings of what we no\v know as the opera .\faltagoJm)', though Weill \\SS pcrhap~ exaggemting when he said that the subject had been 'wurked out'. The 'theme·. perhaps. But there is some re<~Son to suppose that the Malwgunny-

• \ccord•niiiO Br..ehl's :lCCOUnlln lhc o..~~ ·Cbc~dic \'~en· duna ,,,., \lu>ik rur cin cpi,.:bes n.c,cct'IS<llfi}Utt :um Iht:aJn. Suhrk:Unp \ crlagl he, Br«ht, .u~cd \\eill to sell"""' \<net,

g~sii11ge did not enter the picture until a slightJy later stage-either when Brecht added the exlra verse, which begins to 'interpret' them, or even as late as the Baden-Baden performa.oce. In the Songspiel, the characters all wore evening-dress, and had no individual dramatic identities. When Weill later incorporated the music of the Songspie1 io the operd. he revised the vocal numbers and modified the orchestration. The 'verses' of the original Alabama Song had a progressively intensified dissonant accompaniment somewhat in the manner of middle-period Bartok, and the third refrain took the form of a duet in canon. Only a few fragments of the Songspiel's orchestral interludes were trans· ferred to the opera.

* During the late summer and early autumn of 1927,

WeiU worked almost daily with Brecht on the libretto of th.e new opera. The bitter experience or his previous full-length opera had taught bim the necessity of supervising the literary side as closely as possible. In the present instance there was the added difficulty that Brecht had been persuaded somewhat against his will to embark on a libretto, and needed to be constantly reminded that musical considerations must come first. Miraculously (as it later turned out) the collaboration remained fairl y amicable.

The first slight check came when WeiU sent a synopsis of the libretto to the director of Universal Edition, the formidable Dr Hertzka (who might weiJ be called the Ricordi of the time). With great prescience Henzka warned Weill that his opera would meet with fierce oppositi.on, and that if he had any hope of popular success or financial reward {WI!ill at that time was very hard up) he should realize how much be was risking with this work. But. Herttka added nobly, if WeiU was really determined to continue with it, he, Herttka, would give all the support he could. Weill continued.

After a number of minor interruptions, of which the most substantial was a period of a few weeks during the middle of 1928 spent writing The Three· pen11y Opera, the score of Maltagonny was completed - in April 1929, two years after the start. On receipt of the score and libretto, Dr Hertzka once again became alarmed. Above all he was convinced tbat if the Act 3 brothel scene were left as it stood, no opera house in Germany would accept the work. After much pressure, WeiU agreed to make some changes, but these d.id not succeed in making the scene acceptable. Finally, he consented to write an alternative version including a love-duct for Jim and Jenny. His commentS are wonh Quoting:

As far as the ·Love-Scene' is concerned, it goes without saying that a subr..{!uent piano score, to be seen by public and critics, must include the original version of the scene, for it is one of my best pieces, and it is only owing to the initial lack of understanding and cowardice of theatres that it cannot yet be played. The new version of this scene is merely a matter of temporary eKpediency, and also can only be established as such.

When Weill forwarded the new duet (the now famous Crane Duet), Hen~ka and his colleagues were with

good reason delighted, and redoubled their request that the remains of the original scene (the ' Mandelay' music) be removed altogether. But Weill remained adamant, and the most he would consent to was an optional Vl - DE mark in the score.

Meanwhile the negotiations for the first per­formance were running into difficulties. A premiere in Berlin was in some ways the most desirable, and for some time Weill had wanted Mahagom1y to go to Klemperer's Krolloper. But the poor houses for Hindemith's Neues vom Tag~. which had been presented there in June 1929, were discouraging. and moreover the future of the Krolloper was uncertain. By midsummer the idea of a Berlin premiere was dropped, and a contract was made with Leipzig, whose music-director, Gustav Brecher, was a fearless champion of the younger composers, and incidentally a one-time associate of both Mahler and of Weill's teacher, Busoni. The contract stipulated that in view of the very special nature of the work, both composer and libreltist should be allowed full supervision of rehearsals.

* Apart from a few requests from Leipzig for minor

·mollifications' of the text, the period before the premiere passed without HI omen. The most important event was a letter from Weill to his publishers pointing out that

the usc of American names for Mahagonny runs the risk of establishing a wholly false idea of Americanism, Wildwest, or such like. 1 am. very glad that, together with Brecht . .l have now found a very convenient solution ... aod 1 ask you to include the following notice in tbe piano score and libretto: [For some reason this never reached the piano score, and only appears in the full score) ·Jn view of the fact that those amuse~ mentS of man wbicb can be had for money are always and everywhere exact ly lhe same, and because the Amusement-Town of Mahagonny is thus intemarional in the widest sense, the names of the leading characters can be changed into customary lie local] forms at any given time. The following names are therefore recommended for German performances: Willy (for Fatty), Johann Ackermann (for Jim) Jakob Schmidt (for Jack O'Brien) SparbUchsenbeinricb (for Bill) Josef Lettoer (for Joe). •

The premiere took place at the Leip1-ig Opera on 9 March, 1930. The conductor was Brecher, the producer was Walter Brtigmann (who had scored a great success three years earlier with his production of Krenek's Jonny spielt auf. and who had also produced Der Zar and the Mahngonny Songspiel), and the decor and projections were by Caspar Neher. Paul Beinert sang Johann (Jim); Marga Dannenberg. Begbiek: and Mali Trummer. Jenny. As is now weiJ known. the performance was continually interrupted by demonstrations from sections of the audience. and this developed into a full-scale riot. The second performance was given with the house­lights on. • This recommendation. which is pcrhl1)>s less con,-eoient tbouah no less imponant than Weill imajlincd. wu undoubtedly inspired by Stn,~nsky's and Ramuz's 11milo.r reco-nn>endation for performAnces or Tlte SQ/dirr's Ta(,, It Is also or in len$ that Ackermann was one of Weill' s family ruuncs. on. the m;uernal side.

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Weill's distress was, however. greatly alleviated by the unexpected success of the production which followed three days later at Cassel. For this per· formance he made several changes, of which musically the most important was the substitution of the Chorale 'Lasst cuch nicht veriilhren' for Jim's aria ·Nur die Nacht' at the end of Act 2, and the transfer of Jim's aria to the beginning of the third act. One other change is best described in his own words:

For two whole days now I have worked with Brecht at a clarification of the events in Act 3. We now have a version wbich the Pope himself could no longer take exception to. It is made clear that the final demonstrations are in no wise 'Communistic'- it is simpl) that Mahagonny. like Sodom and Gomorrah. fulls on account of the crimes, the Licentiousness and the general confusion of its inhabitants

Commenting on the Cassel performance, Weill adds:

Altogether everything has finally convinced me that the path which 1 have hacked out for myself is the right one, and that it is absolutely out of the question for me to renounce this path simply because its beginnings accidentally became involved with the direst cultural reaction and because, like all challenging innovntions, it was powerfully resisted.

Meanwhile the opposition in the opera world to Wetll and to Malragomry ~"· and the few music­directors "ho wished to stage 11 "ere anxious to do so only with ·cJosed performances'-a Leiplig performance for the benefit of the Arbciter­Bildungs- lnstitut had been a great success, and other conductors proposed the work only for their Volksbiihnc members. In September 1930 Malrago11ny was included at a 'closed' festival of modern opera in Frankfurt. where the other impor· tant item was Schoenberg's comedy Von Heute at!/ Morgen. Weill was disturbed by reports that Schoenberg had been prevented from attending rehearsals. and that when be had wished to make some comments at the Gencralprobe, had been politely led ouL However. all seems to have gone well with Malragonny. The performance was conducted by Hans Wtlbelm (now William) Stein­berg. Jenny was sung by Else Gentner· FISCher (who had taken the pan of the Wife in the Schoenberg opera), Bill by Benno Ziegler ( the l lusband in the Schoenberg) and J im by Wilhelm WOrle. Caspar Neher's projections were used. but the scenery and costumes were newly designed by Ludwig Sicverr.

* The production was warmly received, and was

the last one in a pre--1933 German opera house to pa$$ without untoward incidents. During the early winter of 1930 there "'-ere numerous riots at other performances, and these far surpassed in virulencx that of the more famous Leipzig riot. In October, the National Socialists successfully lodged a protest against the performance of Mahagonn.v in Oldenburg on the ground that it was ·a rubbishy work with inferior and immoral content'. Thuringia, in which Oldenburg is situated, even at that time had a Nazi-controlled Provincial Government.

Although the constitution of the Weimar Republic

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e1epressly forbade censorship of this kind. there were loopholes. Ho"ever, the opponents of Weill and Brecht had little need to use them, for by this time t.he managements of the State Theatres "ere thoroughly frightened. Weill was not the only composer to suffer; nor \\cre the controversial composers the ~ole victims. (There was for instance a campaign aiJinst the works of Weinberger and Janacek.)

The press reactions to Maltagonny gave Weill little cause for comfort. Many of the friends he had won with the The Threepenny Opera were either nonplussed by the new work, or deemed it wiser to hold their ton~:ucs. Only a few critics of any stature came out in favour of the work- most notably H. H. Stud..enschmidt' and Thcodor Wiesengrund·Adomo. After the Frankfurt per­formance. Adorno wrote:

Apart from the diametrically opposed operas of the Schoenber& school, l know of no work better or more st rongly in keeping with the idea of the Avant-gardc than Mahagonny ... Desplte and on account of the primitive facade it must be counted among the most difficul t works of today.

For the most part this 'difficulty', which is still as real as it was thirty years ago, was brushed aside. and Mahagonny with it. h was symptomatic that in Berlin, where Weill's reputation stood highest, negotiations for a production were continually brea.k.in& down. Finally, when the "ork had effectively been driven from the German provincial stages, Mal1agonny at last reacbed the city "hich (to a certain extent) had inspi red it. That it dad so at aU was due not to any official move, but to the enterprise of a distinguished Berlin producer. Ernst-Josef Aufricht (who in 1928 had bought the Theater am SchifTbaucrdnmm and opened it with the premiere of Till! Threepenny Opera). Aufrieht founded a special company for the Mahagonny production, borrowed the Theater am Kllrfursten· damm from Mt\X Reinhardt, and at Weill's sug· gestion obtained the services of Alexander von Zemlinsky as conductor. Zernlinsky (incidentally the brother-an-law of Schoenberg) had been Klemperer's assiswnt at the K.rolloper.

Aufricht reali£ed that unless he could attract the normal theatre-&oing public, the project would be a financial cataStrophe. He also realized that the special demands of the work were such that an ad hoc company drawn from out-of-work opera singers would be worse than useless. He therefore engaged experienced singing actors from operetta and cabaret. Weill, seeing that by tbis tlme there was no other hope of Mahagonny reaching his home city, was in full agreement with this plan, though he was naturally somewhat fearful about the posstble fate of bis own peculiar brand of bel canto. ( It is of some interest that he did his utmost to persuade the great sanger Marie Gutheil-Scboder, who was on the point of retiring from the stage and wished to close her career with 'something different', to take the role of Bcgbick. He believed she would be perfect in its 'diimonische Darstellung'. The

' SluckcnliChmidt's review or the Lcipzia premiere Is reprinted io the current num~r or Opna.

'Imide Inn Bar t<'llh <\.lOSES ~t'ro/1/f( 1 .. FATTY on ~tool other ~itlt' rt'tulinR lmonriol.nmt'j. aloon­llpt' dour1 R of rentrt! upstagt'. Piano R. 8£GBICK mterl thf(lmtlt wi!Hm tltH>rl -Qnt' uf Rn/plr 1\'o/wi's pmJuctimr-V..t'lchl'' for • \lalragonm··

di\ungubhed lady \\<'llS attracted b) the wggesuon, "a'cred. and then. not surpn,ingly, declined.)

* In vic" of the ·pecial condnton~ of the producuon,

11 "'as agn:c:d that the "orl.. hould be streamlined for the benefit of audiences \\htch for the most pan \\Ould be unused to ·iuing through more than 2t hour.. of mustc. \\ eill had authomcd a number of dttTcrent cut~ for ' 'arious opera-house perfom1ances since the Letpzig premrere the 'Benare, Song', for rn~tancc. had dhappcared alm~t unmedtatd~. and Brecht c:\en omatted 11 from has pubh.,hcd \Crsion of the hbreuo. Th~ cutS "'en: colhucd and en­larged for the Berlin perfom1ancc. There were, ho"'c'cr. ~orne compen'l!ltion~. I he original l>CIIing of the ' l-lavanna Lied' in Act I proved to be quite unsuited to Loue 1-<!nya, whn was taking the role of Jenny. Weill therefore composed a new setung the one that has ~ince become: celebrated. CCharacteri~tically. he sketched this superb piece in toto from a scat in the back of the ~tall during a rehearsal, and p~nted it rn full '\Core to the copy• t the follo\\ing da) ) fhc second acces.-.ion was a new chorale to end the 'ICCond act- a o;euing of one 'en.e from · La~t euch nicht ,erfuhren·. La.\tly and most significantly. he "rotc: an orchestral anterlude to be u'l<:d after the e\ccuuon of Jim Mahone)

The Rcrlin run of \falragottm• {premiere 21 December 1931) continued unbrol..en into the carl) month~ uf 1932. amid the dying embers of the Rcpubhc, was the last popular ~ucce'~ Werll \\as to

kno\\ in Germany. Berlin. the only rt'maining stronghold of hberah~m rn Germany, rettt\ed the work enthu~ia~ucall:r. and there were no disturb· ances. For \ elll 11 \\<b not f'Crhaps an unmt'ted jo}. Something of the work's musico-dramauc stature \\a' inevttahly lost. and the nee<:! sary disappcamncc of pcrhap, the finest number 1n the score. the Crone Duet. nfter an attempt had been made to ha'>e it ung otT-stage by t"o chor\1!> member... wa a bnter blo"' . (lrontcally enough the result was to lca\e the brothel scxnc an the form \\hich had offended Dr lleru.la: ll abo brought home to Weill that the onl) logical place for the duet. mustcall) , dramaucally and pocucally. \\&Sin the lru.t act But there "'a~ to be no other oppor­tunity of C"J~ma out that trnn~fer.)

What delighted Weall more than anything \\US hi~ association with Zemlinsky. ·zcmlinsky ist t:ro~­artig' he wrote in a luucr. und lhnl coming from one who wal> alwayl> l>paring with superlative wa~ high prai"e indeed. It •~ unlikely that Weill ever heard a bcuer interpreuuion or one of hio; works. Adorno's comments arc worth quoting:

Zemlmsky, '"ho on the detour through \.1ahler and the Ouorcsccncc or the tranal may fed a so-to-~pcak apoct)phal relationship to Weill's mu,ic. ha:. at la~t rco;cucd this mu~ic from the misconception or clan, JlUL.. and infernal enter· tainrnent. and demonstrated \\hat ll really is: music "''h a <mouldcnng ""idnco;~ and at the same time a mortally. ad and faded backgro und, music "ith a circumspect sharpness "hich by means of ns leap~ and "ide-steps makes aniculnte something "hich the 'Song-public' "ould prefer not to know about. music abo.,e all with a

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sonority that is filtered by a handful of instru­ments and that possesses a power of expansion that routs and leaves behind the diffuseness of a much larger orchestra- provided of course that th is sonority is realised in Zemlinsky·s manner.

Within a year of the Berlin M(l/wgonny , the Thousand-Year Reich had established itself and Weill had fled from Germany, his career in ruins. Almost everything stood in the way of the per­formance of his music abroad. and as far as the larger works were concerned, the situation was hopeless. As early as December 1932 he had con­sented to the performance in Paris of a spurious picc.c. under the title "Mahagonny', which re­presented the very thing he had most wanted lo avoid. In Germany only a few months before. he had written as follows to an amateur organization which proposed to perform a shortened version of the opera:

The thing thatl wish to prevent before all else is that the piece should simply be cut down to the basis of Songs or song-like pieces. ln principle T would much prefer that here and there a song is dropped than that the more exacting passages be cui.

This was undoubtedly a reflection of his feeling that the numbers which had been transferred from the Songspiel to lhe opere~ were those most likely to ob&curc a proper understanding of the score. Yet the so-called ·Pari version' , which was not a version at all but a mere patchwork in which the composer had taken no active pan, consisted of the skeleton of the Songspicl filled out with those pieces from the opera which required only a small instrumental accompaniment.' This made little dramatic or musical sense, but it did at least mean that some of the music might be heard. Unfortunately it was presented in Paris and later in London as if it were an authentic ·work" (this is the ·Mahagonny' to which Constant Lamben refers in Music flo!). ' . A misunderstanding of the situation has led to reports that Weill arront:ed Maltagoml) ' for chamber orchestra.

KURT WEILL ,. 0 e a I

Jla.hagono~·

D e a· ,J a s a ~ e •·

Included in a concert of contemporary music given in London in JuJy 1933, the ·work· was for the mosl part received with blank incomprehension. aod of the daily papers, only the Daily Telegraph spoke well of it, mentioning its 'infinite pathos' and adding 'lt is very serious and a linlc too solemn. At the same time, there is the real stuff of music in it'.

Two years later Weill left a Europe which seemed to have no place or time for him, and soon after his arrival in the United States discouraged a suggestion that the "Paris' Mahagouuy should be performed there. In 1938, immediately after the Anschluss. agents from the Gestapo raided the offices of Universal Edition and took away many of Weill' scores, including the full score and orchestral parts of Mahagonuy. Thus the unhappy history of the work seemed abruptly to have ended.

For some years after the war, it was thought that nothing had survived of the opera other than a few printed piano scores. But as there was no demand for the work. the appalling problem of re-orchestrating il from a much simplified and in­adequate piano reduction did not have to be faced. In 1949 and the early 1950s there were several performances in Germany and Italy of a version of the litlle ' Paris' Mahagonny made by Hans Curjel.

ln the mid-1950s a project to record the authentic opera under the direction of Lotte Lenya led to the rediscovery of an imact orchestral score. The first post-war stage performance took place at the Landesthcater Dam1siadt io November 1957. This garbled version, dressed in full Wild-West regalia, was widely acclaimed. and the production was re­produced with similar public success in Kiel in 1961. Another and by all accounts more reputable production was seen in Lucerne, and to everyone's amazement was warmly received. Further mildly successful productions followed in smaller West German opera houses, and there was also one in Prague. which was a fa ilure.

Soon after the Kicl production, the Hamburg

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Alexander \'On Z emliusk;·, om/ stwuling behind him Kurt W<•ill, at a rehearsal for the Berlin premiere of ' lv(a/wguuny'

S1a1e Opera announced that it would open its 1961-2 season wilh Maltagonny. At the last moment this production was po tponcd on accowlt of the poH1ical si1uatioo foUowing the buiJding of 1he Berlin ''all. The small company al Heidelberg then stepped in and, gr..:atly daring, produced wha1 seems to have boon the nearest that has yet been achieved in Western Gem1any to a truthful presentaLion of the work. They were rewarded by enthusiastic notices. FinaJiy, in September of 1his year Hamburg pre· sented its long-awaited production. The praise which was lavished on a pitifully inept produc1ion and a whoUy unsympathetic musical performance­no fault o f the singers- would have been suOicient evidence of bow little this work is understood, even "•ithout the helpless judgments which were passed on its in1rinsic merits. Weill's reputation in Germany still hangs on a 1hread.

* All the production<> in Germany since the war have been based on the score which was published before the 1930 Leipzig performance, and thus take no account of Weill's revisions (though a few minor points have sometimes been incorporated from Brech1'- published text). With the certain exception of a recent production in Dresden (which wa~ arranged as a full-scale attack on the Bundes­republik. equated o f course with Mahagonny) and the possible exception of the Heidelberg production, oo Y.hich I have no infom1ation. aU post-war German stagings of the work have carefully preserved the American name~ in the libretto; and the Hamburg production used an American-style backdrop for Act 2, thus completely contradicting the clearly expressed intentions of composer and author.

For the fonhcoming production at Sadler's Wells, a n auempt has been made to incorporate 1hc traceable revisions m<~de by Weill arter the Leipzig perfonnance. Most but not all the cuts that he authorized at one time or another after the LeipL.ig performance have been adopted. But so far as the addilions are concerned, there is a difficulty. The records of Universal Edition show that the full-score confiscated by the Gestapo in 1938 contained '2 Eilliagc·. These must have been the new chorale wriuco for the end of Act 2. and the orchestra] interlude for Act 3. (The new 'Havanna-Licd' would have gone the same way, but for a st roke of luck- the score had been borrowed for inclusion io the ·Paris' J'W"nlwgonny and not returned.)

A$ for the chorale, the present \\Titer \\as fonunate enough to discover the sketch of thi \\bile catalogu­ing the Weill legacy for the Academy of Ans io Berlin. Except in complex 1cxtures. which arc not present in the chorale. Weill's sketches were in­variably close to t11c final version. The chorale hns therefore been orchestrated (b>' Leonard Hancock) a nd ''ill be perfom1cd in the SadJer's Wells production.

On the other hand, oo trace of the orchestral interlude has yet been discovered. This is par­ticularly regrettable, since according to a contem· pomry review it was an impressive and sub)tantial piece whose formal function was ~imilar to that of the D minor imerlude in Woz:eck-a work, in­cidentally, for which Weill had a profound admira­tion. (He was one of the first composers outside the Schoenberg circle to defend it in public.)

Among 1be other depanures from the printed vocal score which will be made at Sadler's Wells arc the changed positions of · ur die Nacht' and 1he Crone Duet. ment ioned above, and the restora­tion of two important en~ies for Trinity Moses in the brothel scene (these taken from Weill's auto­graph score).

* Tn conclusion, a personal and informal po t~ript to these necessarily dry details. England was a country that intrigued but puzzled WeiJI during his lifetime. lt would be pleasant if the first occasion on which a full-length work of his is performed here should also be the flrst occasion since the war that Mahugonfly has been staged in ils full musicaJ and dramatic force. and yet received with tolerance. There arc many reasons why Weill's aim' and methods should meet wilh strong resistance tn some counlrie . But one of the blessings of this isJand of ours is that it sometimes insulates us from undirected heat. 11 \\Ould be a pity to destroy this insulation before the event.

When a composer of geniu) or great 1alcnt ts

neglected, misundenood or abused. those who love his music tend to feel these wounds as their own and in l>CCking to sterilize them, risk opening new ones. There is no valid reason Y.hy anyone ~hould be harangued into liking. or feeling he ough1 to

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like, the music of Weill. Let the music first be allowed to speak for itself- it is eloquent enough­and after that can come the exegesis and analysis, for which, indeed. there is ample scope. I know from my own experience that it is easy to be initially repelled by Weill's manner, for he is often concerned with painful things. But if repelled, then leave him alone-though do not be surprised if you later find yourself being drawn back, to discover that the music is not what it first seemed. There are other composers of whom this is true-composers of marked individuality who speak with extreme intensity in a (relatively) narrow defile. This is at once their strength and limitation. (l am thinking for instance of Olivier Messiaen, a figure who in otber respects could hardly be less like Weill.}

Those who are able to approach Mahagonny with a completely open mind are in a fortunate position. Of the ideas about Malwgonny to which others may have been exposed, there is only one which menaces even the most generous-hearted listener­the idea that Weill intended the work as an attack on the body of the operatic convention by means of parody or an injected virus Gazz. cabaret etc}. This idea is wholly false.

1o the first place, Weill bad much too deep a knowledge of the operatic repertory to suppose that so trivial and ignorant ao aim were feasible even if desirable. Second, although his faith in opera was founded on the classics- above all on Mozart whom he worshipped. but also on Weber. Verdi, Strauss and (uniquely for a composer of his generation) Wagner- he was far too excited by the possibilities opened up by Stravinsky (and in a different way Janacek) to suppose that opera was a

thing of the past. Third, his temperament, for all its ironic and sceptical qualities, was far too creative and humane to allow any important place for parody, except as a means of exposing the inhumane. (And whatever first appearances may suggest, I am inclined to think that the only traces of pure parody to be found in Mahagonny are the horrifying storm· trooper tunes of tbe boxing scene and the fairg.round banalities of the tria.l seene.)8 To say, as some have done, that Mahagonny contains parodies of passages from The Magic Flute and Der Freischiitz (two operas which WeiU venerated) betrays a total failure to understand the origins and motivations of his art.

1 still have said nothing to suggest what Mahagonuy is about, and therefore nothing to suggest why it has so often been a hated and feared work. One way is to quote some words written about quite another work by a great man who, incidentally, understood Mahagonny and was obsessed by it. The words are by Karl Kr.1us. and they come from his preface to his own vast play, The Last Days of Mankind. He is explaining his ironic contention that the play is only suitable for a theatre on Mars:

Audiences here would not be able to bear it. For it is blood of their blood, and its contents are those unreal, unthinkable years, out of reach for the wakefulness of mind, inaccessible to any memory and preserved only in nightmares­those years when the characters from an operetta played the tragedy of mankind.

That too is The Rise and Fall of Mahagomty. • The a.lmost Brincn·like comedy (_([ the play music in A Midsummtr Nigllt"s .Dr~am) of the Maldtn's Pray~r varialions is much less purely parodi!tic: than one miaht at lint suppoK.